I've had a dead out catch a swarm before.... don't think it cam from my hives. But other than that one, I have never had luck with traps. I keep trying tho. Maybe there just aren't enough bees around here. Although I do get swarm calls. Let said earlier in this thread. Its like fishing.

I have had a trap up 200 ft from my hives since last April (1 year). One of my hive swarmed last week and they went to the trap. I took them down put them in a new box with new frames and one frame of brood and they are smoking! I love traps. Mine had one old frame with old comb in it and 4 top bars (it's a standard size nuc trap). In two days they built out half the top bars and filled them with nectar. I waited 2 days then checked to see if she had eggs, she did! So I took it down. If she had no eggs I was going to leave them another week so she could get mated. I love traps.

I made two bait hives this year out of plywood the same size as a ten frame deep. I also used a ten frame deep and screwed a plywood top and bottom on it. I bought pheremone from Dadent. I also got some lemon grass oil. I put two old drawn frames and eight foundationless frames in each bait hive. I put the pheremone inside the hive and put a few drops of lemongrass oil on a couple frames. I also put a few drops on the outside of the bait hives near the entrance. I just used rope and hoisted them up into trees about fifteen feet. So far I have caught three swarms this year. Two rather large ones and one so so. I just brought the third one home tonight! I will be putting this bait hive back out tomorrow! Went from one hive this spring to three when I bought two packages, then so far caught three swarms in the bait hives and was called to take one down from an apple tree! These bees are a lot cheaper than the packages!!! A lot funner to aquire too.

I love fishing, this sounds like fun. I am setting my first 2 traps this week, I will keep updating as things happen. I am going to use a deep with a few frames of foundation and the rest foundationless. Any suggestions/ideas?

BTW, Scott(Hardwood) was telling me the other day that if you need to pinch a queen for any reason to put her in a film canister with a little rubbing alcohol. Then you can use a cotton swab or something apply, the alcohol evaporates then you have queen scent left behind. Scott may chime in a add his two cents here, but sounds like a good addition to the trap.

I think this is a cool way to get bees, and as mentioned above, its all about knowing where to cast your bait.

So with that being said, other than the traps you can buy, what are others using as traps, how and where are the mounted or located? Any helpfull hints?

We are using Melissa Officinalis fragrance and/or oil (In Turkish its name is "ogulotu" -swarmgrass-), We also putting a few drops propolis solution on the outside of the bait hives near the entrance and we put one or two old drawn frames.I think the most efficient way is hang them up into trees about three meters. In my apiary, I hang nucs to the four directions and I catch my three swarms and two extras...

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Last year was my first year keeping bees and the one hive I had died out in February. Anyway, I have three packages on order for this year and last weekend I decided that I would make some swarm traps out of scrap lumber that I had laying around to see if I could expand some more this year on the cheap. I was also gifted a bunch of lumber from another guy so that helped out quite a bit too. I ended up with (13) 6-frame (deeps) trap boxes. The boxes are basically like a nuc only that they hold (6) frames instead of (5)I'm trying a number of different lures, trap locations, etc and writing down my experiences doing this to see if I can find that certain criteria are more attractive to swarms.

All of the boxes I made have sliding doors with ventilation screen so that I can just shut the doors once they are hopefully inside the traps. This is going to be fun! :)

I can't wait to try this stuff. I have never trapped a swarm. I have retrieved several, but I just think it would be extremely cool to catch them for free... BTW, this is my first post. I have spent hours already just reading. I am really enjoying myself...Donald :-D

Last year was my first year keeping bees and the one hive I had died out in February. Anyway, I have three packages on order for this year and last weekend I decided that I would make some swarm traps out of scrap lumber that I had laying around to see if I could expand some more this year on the cheap. I was also gifted a bunch of lumber from another guy so that helped out quite a bit too. I ended up with (13) 6-frame (deeps) trap boxes. The boxes are basically like a nuc only that they hold (6) frames instead of (5)I'm trying a number of different lures, trap locations, etc and writing down my experiences doing this to see if I can find that certain criteria are more attractive to swarms.

All of the boxes I made have sliding doors with ventilation screen so that I can just shut the doors once they are hopefully inside the traps. This is going to be fun! :)

Well, I got my first call today that one of my traps had a swarm move in on Sunday so I'll be checking it out tomorrow to see what's inside!

Does it count if I accidentally caught two swarms this year in a nuc that wasn't set-up for anything and a hive box I set out to clean and prepare for a cutout? Both had one frame each with some brood comb in it. I'm assuming the brood comb is what did it.

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Everyone said it couldn't be done. But he with a chuckle replied, "I won't be one to say it is so, until I give it a try." So he buckled right in with a trace of a grin. If he had a worry he hid it and he started to sing as he tackled that thing that couldn't be done, and he did it. (unknown)

Bees are funny creatures. Back in the 70's ( boy am i dating myself) I was nailing together hive bodies and frames in my garage. To keep the area in the garage uncluttered I stacked the completed hive bodies in the drive way ( you know where this is going). after a few hours work my wife asked if i had brought some bees home. I asked her what she was talking about. She walked with me to the drive way and sure enough 3 stacks of the hive bodies had bees in them. Go figure :-P

I am using lemongrass oil drops on a Qtip and some dark old drawn comb. Should I be renewing the lemongrass oil at some point?

I read it somewhere (maybe JP) and I tried it.... put the lemongrass oil in an old pill bottle... drill a few small holes... and put a cotton ball in there with a few drops... helps it last longer... doesn't evaporate as much as if you just put some drops in the bait hive.

I read your article with great interest but was left wondering what the formulation was that you developed. Is it available?I tried your email and it is not a valid address, according to my mail program.RegardsJoe Redburn

I am using lemongrass oil drops on a Qtip and some dark old drawn comb. Should I be renewing the lemongrass oil at some point?

I read it somewhere (maybe JP) and I tried it.... put the lemongrass oil in an old pill bottle... drill a few small holes... and put a cotton ball in there with a few drops... helps it last longer... doesn't evaporate as much as if you just put some drops in the bait hive.

...DOUGKD4MOJ

Here are some tips (from my experience and surveying tech literature) on how to get the Nasonov scents to release continuously and at rates favorable to persuading scout bees to buy into the lure. BTW, see also the works by Dr. Tom Seeley at Ithaca, especially Honeybee Ecology good info on the bees' process of scouting out viable nest sites.1. Enclose the pheromone in polyethylene. Most of the commercial swarm lures I have seen have been the little vial (~1.5" long) sold as disposable centrifuge specimen vials. Even a zip lock baggie (also polyethylene) will be better than open lures/swabs/droplets. The citral and geraniol are sufficiently volatile to penetrate the walls of polyethylene, even rigid PE like the vials. (To prevent Nasonov migration/diffusion, use polypropylene. )2. Place the bait hive high off the ground. 3 meters is a good height. Not sure why this is a good height, but it seems to have to do with the ability of the scout bees to find the cavity/trap and report on its favorability, compared to other sites they scout out.3. Use a shady spot. When placed in full sun the temperature inside the box/trap/bait hive will cause more rapid diffusion of the pheromone than necessary. This will make the lure last longer, without impairing its effectiveness.

Of course, use the other common sense rules, like put the traps in locations where scout bees are likely to look, such as under the eaves of buildings (or what the common swarm locations are for your locality.)

And now an editorial comment: I expect that as Africanized genes increasingly infiltrate the pool of genes in managed hives, there will be increasing tendency for swarms to issue from apiaries. There will also be an increasing frequency of swarms from feral colonies. Each area that becomes affected by swarms which are hybridized with AHB genes will have cavity preferences and different other behaviors, for example, greater tendency to issue multiple, smaller swarms. Again, hybridizing differently in one area than another. These seems to be the lessons from Mexico and the Southwestern USA.

Regarding the distance discussion, there have been several studies, whether in academia, or seasoned beekeeper and others.Here is a link to a Dr. Tom Seeley presentation regarding how swarms decide on their optimum hive: http://breeze.cce.cornell.edu/p1vpc8e0m5w/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal This URL is a video that launches in Adobe Connect from your web browser. Much of it is quite basic, but it is, I believe, a great companion to the Dr. Justin Schmidt material cited in the first post of this discussion. The video is about an hour long.I note that, this spring, a 15,000-bee swarm took up a tree branch that was intertwined with a chain link vehicle gate. (The gate to an apiary had been opened such that it was pressed against the tree branches, so when the bees took up their swarm cluster position, the chain link gate ran right through their cluster, about 5 feet off the ground.) Rather than disturb them, we set up a swarm trap about 4 feet away. I simply rolled a large trashcan there, about 48" high, placed a medium super there with empty plastic frames, plus one frame of drawn comb and a pheromone lure. Surprisingly, it took them 3 days until they decided to occupy the box. Had it taken longer, we would have needed to close the gate. I'm confident they would have re-constituted the cluster and carried on scouting out potential cavities, but I'm glad I didn't put them through the exercise. Two things I gather from this:1. They didn't accept the super-conveniently-located, super-well-provisioned cavity until they had gone through the whole process of comparing various potential sites and had reached consensus on the close one, and2. They were only in so much of a hurry to make their decision.A little more background: They came to the area as a cut-out from an exposed hive hanging from a tree branch ten feet off the ground. 100% of their brood comb, including new eggs in fresh comb were installed into the box in which the colony was placed. They abandoned the box, leaving all their brood unattended. Because they were a cut-out, and little of their honey was available to them, they had little honey to take with them as a departing swarm. The branch/gate on which they temporarily settled was only 50 feet from the box they abandoned. They are now prospering--explosively building comb and rearing brood.Happy Swarm trapping,SkepWrangler

I read it somewhere (maybe JP) and I tried it.... put the lemongrass oil in an old pill bottle... drill a few small holes... and put a cotton ball in there with a few drops... helps it last longer... doesn't evaporate as much as if you just put some drops in the bait hive.

...DOUGKD4MOJ

bud1...

Use old pill bottles and drill 1 small hole (the smalls you can find) in at so the lemongrass oil on cotton ball doesn't evaporate as fast...some times he put in old comb. He been do this for the past 7 years or so

BEE HAPPY Jim 134

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